This sparse document (Adobe Acrobat format) announces the resignation of Yoichi Wada from his post as president of Square Enix. This follows the revelation that the Japanese publisher anticipates an "extraordinary loss" in its next financial reporting noted in a statement (Adobe Acrobat format) with revised financial forecasts. VG247 summarizes the bad news from the revision, noting that this includes lowering the company's projected sales slightly, but involves a giant increase in losses, saying the company's previously projected ¥3.5 billion net income loss is now anticipated to be closer to ¥13 billion ($138 million USD). Word is the revision is due to slow sales of major console titles, a sluggish arcade market, and the addition of approximately ¥10 billion in restructuring efforts, saying: "In view of the rapidly changing environment of the game businesses, the Company has decided to implement major reforms and restructuring in its development policy, organizational structure, some business models, and others."

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SimplyMonk wrote on Mar 26, 2013, 13:20:I just don't think I understand company executive politics enough. Just from the blurb it sounds like the company was actually looking to beat or at least match forecasts until they decided to do a $100M restructure in order to better fit the current market. Is that reason enough for resignation? You make a costly decision in the companies best interest and have to resign for it?

Is it perhaps that he should of done this change gradually of the last couple of quarters or pushed the costs into the next fiscal?

How many companies go through a 100 million dollar restructuring? That's an obscene amount of money.

Color me as someone not surprised either. When the latest Final Fantasy MMO came out it was... err... shit. And SE's response was "you're American, you don't have the refined tastes of the Japanese, of course you don't like the game." And then the Japanese hated the game. And SE shit themselves.

My friend has been playing the newest Final Fantasy MMO now for like 18 months without actually paying for it while they tried to "fix" it, and it still is mediocre. The JRPG genre is utterly stagnant and has had no meaningful developments in easily the last 10 years or so, and in that time the mainstream market has moved on from the cookie-cutter JRPG where mindless grinding and the story are separated by plexiglass, where the plot anyway is that you're some spunky misunderstood 13 year old kid who goes on to save the world when an entire army of trained professional adults could never do it. Along the way you assemble a team of kooky-yet-grim companions who tell you that you can do it and they believe in you.